Passion and ideal are powerful driving forces. It lights up vision, allows one to bear hardship and make sacrifices. It bounds like-minded people to a common destiny. However, the world is fallen and wicked. More than once has an ideal be lost, and from it came a capochy of disasters and heart-breaks.
- The noble lord of a fief treats his serf extremely well; almost to the point of treating them as his extended family. This causes a scandal among the gentry and the other nobility, but the noble lord sticks to his ideal and ignore the gossips of the others. As such, he never rose in status or position, but he stuck to his ideal. Yet one fateful night a rebellion, incite by one of his rivals, turns the lord’s serfs against him. The lord’s family was slaughtered. WIth the help of an errant group of knights and adventurers, he put down the rebellion. Yet after that, the noble lord becomes a slavesmater, and treat his serfs harshly. He has also begin a campaign to make sure the rivals who started the rebellion pay for their crime, hundred times over.
- An isolated monastery takes in escaped serfs, menials and cottars who have been driven out and let them tend to the fields allocated to the priests. One night, a previous brigand sold the idea of killing all the monks and using the monastery as a fortress. They struck on a pre-arranged date and many of the acolytes were slain. Luckily, the abbot is a high ranking Mystic and along with some of the loyal refugees, fought off the mutiny. Though then the nature of the monastery changed. The monastery becomes a prison for those whom escape there. They suffer a life worse than slaves. And the abbot, with his heightened supernatural senses, will judge passing by travelers of their ‘purity’ and will attempt a preemptive kidnap those who aren’t pure enough.
- A Dark Elementalist, outcast and scorned by his fellow countrymen, wander the world, seeking to bring the darkness to wherever he goes. Such strong is his hatred and malice that he would call down withering rain and summon haunting whispers to terrify townsfolk. After years of such journerys, he realised that there is already enough evil in the world without him doing anything at all. He’s just a drop of the vile river that corrputs the heart of men and the earth of the land. After much contemplating, he realises the new role of the element of Darkness. It is that of balance – where an Earth Elementalist sought to bless the soil, he will blight some other. Where an Air Elementalist sought to calm the waves, he would bring a storm to elsewhere. He believes this to be his real calling now – verdant places he would blight, but those blighted he would leave a mysterious signal to draw his brethens there.
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